No More Joker
by Lothlorienx
Summary: Set after the episode Mad Love. Batman saves Harley after one of the Joker's stunts nearly kills her. She needs help, so he delivers her someplace safer. Oneshot.


_**This is set after the final scene in the episode, Mad Love. Season 4, episode 21.**_

* * *

With a final scream, the Joker was in handcuffs.

Batman was thankful that his crazed laughter had ended, now that he had nearly lost consciousness. The only sound that escaped his cruel lips, carved forever in a smile, was agonized moans and groans.

Batman found it hard to have sympathy for him, him of all people.

Any other criminal he found it in himself to care for; to genuinely care for their wellbeing and whether or not they got healthy and whole again. About whether they still had potential to go back to their life before crime had poisoned them. But the Joker was another matter. Another matter entirely. After everything he had done, and as the years flew by unchanging, Batman knew there was no hope for him. The only thing there was to do was throw him away and lock him up forever, no matter what it took to do so.

He slung the Joker over his shoulder. The handcuffs rattled faintly as Batman moved, carrying him over to the Batmobile and opening up the hood. The dark black covering slid back, revealing the two seats that waited for personage. Batman carelessly threw the Joker into the passenger seat, hearing a soft grunt escape him as his body crashed down into the car.

The hood slid back on, securing the Joker inside. A small, temporary prison.

Batman didn't fear that the Joker would awake and take the car on a joyride. Not only was the Joker too out of it to do anything, but the car was secured and locked. The only person who would be able to control it was he, since Batman held the controls in his hand. And the controls wouldn't even budge for hot-wiring. He was trapped there.

Quickly, Batman made his way back to the rubble in the alleyway. By the time he arrived, he was sprinting, running so as to get there in time. Skidding to a stop, he came face to face with the destruction that was all around him.

Broken glass with edges sharper than knives, splintered wooden beams both heavy and painful, and chunks of concrete littered with thin streaks of metal and wire. Even bright yellow caution tape was tangled into the mix. And beneath all of this, somewhere within the pile of destruction, was Harleen.

After the Joker had thrown her out of the window and then blew up a fairly good portion of the Aquacenter, she'd lost consciousness too.

Batman stepped carefully over the debris, searching for her body. He could see a single arm, clad in red with black diamonds, stretched out from beneath a solid chunk of plaster wall. With all his strength, he pushed the wall section back, and lifted up the wooden boards that covered her body after that. She lay on a pile of broken glass; many of the shards had ripped open her skin, and some pieces still were embedded within her.

Batman felt a wave of pity rise up within him as he looked down at Harley.

Reaching down with a black, gloved hand, he picked little pieces of glass out of her before her slid his arms up underneath her. He didn't even hear a moan escape her lips as he picked her up, or feel her body twitch or tense. Nothing. She was dead weight in his arms. At least she breathed; he could tell that by the rise and fall of her chest. Blood was trickling out of her mouth, along with the blood from all her opened scars and cuts. Beneath the white face paint, a dark bruise was darkening on her cheek where the Joker had struck her.

Another wave of hatred rose up within him.

Batman stepped carefully through the rubble, navigating his way back to the Batmobile with Harley still in his arms. Far off, Batman could hear the sirens of approaching police cars. Perhaps firetrucks and ambulances were with them, too. The sound was eerie as it echoed through the streets, cascading through the air in waves of mechanical shrieks.

He didn't care for them.

What was done was done. Everyone escaped alive, and everyone who was harmed was in his custody. He didn't escaped unscratched, either. When he'd told the Joker that Harley had come closer to killing him that anyone else, he was serious. He'd meant it when he said that convincing her to call him was his only way to escape.

Batman set Harley down on the elongated hood of the Batmobile. The door that secured the Joker in place slid back once more, revealing the pained clown still lying in the seat, his body broken and bruised from the fight. Batman's hands shot out, grabbing onto the clown's clothes and clenching his fists. He pulled the Joker out of the car in one swift motion, not caring about the pained groans that escaped him, and walked towards the nearby sirens.

"Batman," said the familiar voice of Commissioner Gordon.

"Here," Batman said in a monotone voice, tossing the handcuffed Joker towards them. No one caught him, so he landed with another grunt on the pavement, right at the feet of the police.

When Gordon looked up again, Batman was gone. Having disappeared into the shadows like he always did. With a huff, Gordon turned away from where Batman had stood, focusing at the criminal at his feet. "To the slammer with you," said the Commissioner as he hauled him up and shoved him into the back of a waiting police car.

Harley was still on the hood of the Batmobile when Batman returned. She hadn't moved a muscle, which Batman had expected. After the fall she had taken, it was a miracle that she was still breathing. He knew that her bones were broken, a fairly good portion of them. You didn't need to be a detective to figure that much out. Even without the somewhat sickening angle that her wrists and ankles were in, falling from three stories up would damage the human body beyond belief. Any idiot would know that.

Sliding her from the hood, he moved Harley down into the seat of the car, and then jumped into the seat next to her. The door above them slid closed and locked down securely, shutting them both in. Batman looked over at her one last time, making sure that she was still breathing, before starting the car up once more. The motor hummed into life, and the wheels squealed as the car finally took off and sped down the pavement. He rounded a corner quickly, navigating the streets of Gotham with a precision that only he had.

He'd spent his whole life in Gotham, and spent an even greater amount of time studying this city into which he was born and cursed. No navigator, no map, no GPS would ever come close to his mental topography skills.

It seemed like hours before the car finally came to the hospital, though logically it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes. The Batmobile gave another sharp turn and then disappeared into the corner of the alleys. The dark shadows of the night consumed the black car, and shielded it from prying eyes. Once it was cloaked from the public, the hood slid open once more, and Batman carried Harley out of the car.

Batman was quick and stealthy.

Sterile air met him beneath the mask, and his eyes narrowed at the scent, some of the vapors even creeping into his retinas right along with the harsh light. Clean white ceilings and floors and walls; fluorescent lights that drenched the hospital halls in unflattering light that seared past his black mask. Batman had always hated hospitals, and the vibe that they gave off. He hated them but it seemed like he was in one every other day, at least in his mind.

A nurse in a crisp white coat turned around, clipboard in hand and glasses sliding down her nose. She spun around to walk down one of the enormous hallways that spanned throughout the building, only to step into a shadow above her. Looking up, she lost her grip on the clipboard as she came face to face with Batman.

"She needs help," he said in his low, serious tone.

The nurse looked down at his arms, noticing for the first time the badly injured woman within his arms. She recognized the woman instantly: Harley Quinn, companion of the Joker, criminal mastermind. She'd seen her on television plenty of times, read about her in the Gotham newspaper, even heard her on the occasional police scanners.

"Of…of course," the nurse stuttered.

* * *

It was dark when Harleen finally woke up. Dark blue ceiling tiles swam into her vision as she peeled her eyes open. For what seemed like the longest time, that was all she knew. The dark ceiling tiles above her. Nothing else came to her; not feeling or smell or hearing or taste. She hadn't even the concept of time.

What came next was her hearing. She noticed that she heard nothing; everything was gone. If she strained, her mind would play a silent beeping sound next to her, and she couldn't be sure if it was real or not. Then taste came to her; a thick metallic taste of dried blood that had stopped flowing into her mouth. And then feeling, when she realized that she was laying in bed. With her feeling now returning to her, she realized just how much pain she was in. Groans escaped her, and when she shifted her body, that was when she realized that she was tied down. Partly by bed straps buckled up her form beneath the blanket and gown, but partly by elevated casts and bandages, and a tube of morphine stuck into her arm.

 _I'm in the hospital,_ she knew then.

She didn't have much of her memory left. What little she could recall was the image of Batman, though that was all she saw in her mind. Batman. What position he was in, where they were, what was happening, she didn't know. But a feeling of triumph and peril blossomed in her brain as his image swam up to meet her, so she knew that it must have been another plot to get rid of him.

And then the Joker swam up in her mind right after him. But the visual of him didn't bring up anything. No feelings or senses or emotions or hunches. It was nothing. Dead and bland and unnoticed.

Harleen turned her head and saw a yellow light spilling in through closed blinds. The color beyond the blinds was mostly white, with the occasional splotch of dark blue or gray.

 _Doctors and cops._

 _Lovely,_ she thought.

"You're awake," said a dark voice from the window.

"Yeah…" she sighed. She wanted to say more, but a painful, stabbing pain racked her lungs and ribs, so she remained silent after that one word was spoken.

"How are you feeling?" the dark voice spoke once more.

"Bad," she replied. Her voice was small and quiet. Batman knew that she was in extreme amounts of pain, even with the morphine in her veins and all her bones reset.

"The doctors say your wounds will heal in about two to three months," he told her.

Harleen said nothing.

A thick wisp of her blonde hair spilled into her face, and Harleen tried to move it out of her eyes. But she couldn't, since both of her hands were wound up in thick gauze. She tried blowing it away next, but that didn't work either.

Batman's gloved hand reached out to her face, and he tucked the strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Surprise showed on Harley's face. She saw that he was already stepping back away from her once her hair was out of the way, not wanting to encroach upon her personal space any more.

"You'll be sent to Arkham once your condition is stabilized," he told her.

"Great," she said sarcastically.

Harley closed her eyes again. Bright red and purple designs flashed before her closed lids, and she tried to focus in on them. To focus on something other than the pain that she was in.

"You need more morphine," Batman said. It wasn't a question; he knew. Studying her while she lay in bed, he could see her breath become shallow and strained once more, the slight tension that built within her muscles, and the crevices that lined her face as bolts of pain shot through her body.

"Yeah…" Harley said, unable to conceal it any longer.

Batman walked up to the closed door.

He knocked on the door, loudly, until it felt like he was about to break it off the hinges. Four knocks, and then he spun around and left the dark hospital room in a flash, before one of the nurses opened up the door in a panic. Flicking on the lights, he asked, "Something wrong, Miss Quinzel?"

"I need more morphine," she said, pointing her gauzed fist at the empty bag.

"Of course," said the nurse, and he sped off again.

He'd left the lights on, which gave her a headache. She closed her eyes again, watching the patterns flicker and float before her. A migraine was creeping across her skull, and her muscles felt on fire.

 _I'll kill him,_ Harley thought as her mind swam back to the Joker once more. Thoughts of revenge and screams filled her mind, and a wicked smile came to her face as she thought about him lying beaten on the ground before her.

But then a numbness took over her once more.

She wouldn't kill him. Didn't even _want_ to kill him. She wanted to leave him alone, do nothing to him. To just make him fade out of her life, or to tear him away from her. Just the same way she'd had her Medical Practitioner's License torn away from her. All thanks to _him_.

As for _him_.

Batman?

Joker?

She didn't care. All she knew was that she was giving up. She was done trying to win this game, done trying to live this life. It was far too much for her; she understood that now.

No more Joker.


End file.
